Flower Power - a finished quilt top!

There's nothing at all on the design wall this Monday.  I made my deadline last week and finished up that hexagon quilt top!  It's a really nice feeling to finally be done with hand sewing hexie flowers at last!  I'm calling this one Flower Power!

This quilt top came about from a fabric swap and challenge with our branch of the Irish Patchwork Society.  You can get sixteen 2 1/2"squares from a strip of fabric so we worked out a plan that if you had 25 strips you would have 400 squares - enough for a baby quilt or something bigger if you added from stash which most of us did and our finished quilts all turned out so different from each other. 

Each person cuts 25 strips of fabric or jelly roll strips from stash.  Cut each strip into 16 squares.  Take 1 square from each strip and make 16 different piles, each containing 25 different squares.  Take 16 plastic bags (like ziploc or sandwich bags) and place 1 pile into each bag and write your name or initials on the front.  Keep 1 bag and donate 15 to the group pile.  You get 15 bags back and depending on how many people sign up you may get some of your own back or all different.
 

Design idea

We got a really good mix in our swap and I was inspired by the little hexagon Flowers for Eleni that so many of us made for the beautiful quilt created by Jody of Tales of Cloth.   I wanted to try something along those lines but a little different.  I kept the black centres and cut fabric from my stash for those.  All but 1 large flower and 2 small ones came from the swapped squares.  Mum and I spent some time arranging the squares into colour families and over the Christmas I sewed them into flowers.

I also added over a 100 light grey hexagons to connect the flowers into rows.  I'm wondering now if I shouldn't have used a darker colour as it almost blends in with the background. 

I used 1" Hexagons as they are a really good fit for 2 1/2" squares and I had a bag of them from quilt now magazine so I only had to cut out 10 more printed pages of them!  And I used each paper piece more than once - I think its about 550 Hexagons in this altogether!

I had to modify my design a bit in the making as I changed my mind on the layout and didn't have enough white fabric (backing fabrics are from Dashwood Studios range Nature Trail that I bought from LoveFabric.ie) so I ended up with 1 row less than intended but to be fair this is pretty big and covers our standard double bed with overhang!  About 80" x 95" in total. 

So my first finished flimsy of 2016.  It's massively girly and I love it!  I've fallen in and out of love with this one so many times since I started it in November but am back to liking it again.  So, so, happy it's done at last.  My hands are hanging off me and need a break already.  I ended up glueing these all in place (with Roxanne's basting glue!) and am hoping to top stitch them through the quilt sandwich when I get my machine back.  I'm thinking of adding a line of black hand quilting around each flower row to add a bit of definition.  I think it needs it and by the time I get around to that my hands will have recovered!  Hope your new year is off to flying start too!

Making 3D quilted items

I love quilts with a bit of 3d added to them, like a prairie point or raised applique but it did not occur to me to make 3d quilted items.

Gillian Travis gave our branch of the IPS (Irish Patchwork Society) a workshop on how to make her prize winning 3D flowers made from quilted pieces. You may have seen these at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham a number of years back.

Gillian has a new kit for sale and these will be the last of them. She is moving onto applique kits of Indian ladies and other fun stuff.

Included in the kit is fabric and felt to make the quilt sandwich, wire to hold the shape, buttons for the centre and a template sheet for 5 different designs.

We each used a kit on the day and it came with beautiful hand printed fabric. There were 2 options of kits, with orange and without and I couldn’t resist the gorgeous brightness of the kits with the orange included.

The fabrics are hand printed in India and when travelling there on holiday Gillian visited the workshop, made friends and worked out the basic pieces of a kit. Gillian was keen to make sure the sourcing was ethical and of a high quality.

The kits we were using are the 3rd edition and I just love the paper the wire came wrapped in. Don’t these Bollywood movies look like lots of fun?

I’m quite proud of my one flower made on the day!

There is a bit of a learning curve with this one, involving using free motion quilting, zipper foot, different types of zig-zag stitch and Gillian gave us lots of tips on the day. It was slow going and we all pretty much made 1 flower.


Now that we’ve gotten the hang of it I expect the next few would be much quicker.


Doesn't everyone's work all look so pretty together? Thank you Gillian and all the IPS peeps for such a lovely day!


Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts and